Teresa & Mike CHS - Our journal

[frustratedearthmother]

That's a great pic! Gracie loves her frisbee so much she even holds it in her mouth while she goes potty, lol.

 

[Baymule]

Love the dog picture, it is a framed wall hanger for sure! Can't say I love the rain pictures, wow y'all have had a LOT of rain! Your sheep are looking good!

 

[greybeard]

The usual reason cattle hesitate to go thru a gate is that the particular gate is usually closed to them.
They view it as suddenly being open as an anomaly.
Once they can go back and forth thru it a few times with nothing bad happening to them, they'll go thru it on their own with no problem and be led thru it easier.

Mike..what's your thoughts on this:

It's data from the 767 cargo plane that crashed into Trinity Bay a few days ago.

Audio between that flight and Houston ATC:
(other flt voice comm mixed in of course. This flight's call sign is Giant 3591)
@ around 9:31 appears to be the last contact with Giant 3591...a few seconds later ATC asks someone if they are "picking up any ELTs?" so at that point they were already down.
http://aviationtribune.com/wp-conte...-Air-Flight-3591-Crash-ATC-Communications.mp3

 

[Mike CHS]

Hopefully they will find the recorders but it almost looks to me from the flight data that either someone intentionally brought the aircraft down or they had a flight control problem like the one last year. That's the one where the pilots were fighting the aircraft software to overcome a stall.

 

[Mike CHS]

We had to bring in some hay from outside today. We had bought smaller round bales to get us through winter but we used a lot more than we had expected. We fortunately have a friend not far away who sold us some large round bales and set them out in the fields for us. My tractor can't handle the full sized bales so we are working out an arrangement but it still makes an economical sense.

I have several trees down that I bartered with another neighbor. I'll cut the wood up and haul it to his outside furnace wood storage and I can use his tractor to haul the large bales of hay home and get the large bales for $30.00 a bale. We are going to build a shelter to to be able to store around 20 large bales for winter. We used tarps for this year with varied experience. Some of the hay stored had a lot of mold and some had none.I would be interested in some advice on the use of tarps.

 

[Wehner Homestead]

We’ve done tarps. Waste is extreme on bottom row against ground and anything exposed. Stacking can be an issue if you don’t have a good way to handle them. The tarp becomes more difficult to keep from being torn or becoming a kite as more bales are removed from it. Tarps that are made for that only last 2-3 years. All others aren’t good after one year it seems. Hay is only good for waste after it’s a year old if you don’t get it used. Mold always appears somewhere on those bales. Moisture effects the amount of mold. We used to tarp large round bale groups that were three wide by 14 (or 16?) long by three high in a triangle pattern.

We try to keep the dry hay inside now but have found it keeps decently with our net wrap.

We do mostly haylage bales that are wrapped in white plastic (and of course dry, small squares to fill the loft.) Love this method! Should not be fed to goats. I’m unsure about sheep.

 

[Mike CHS]

Thank You. We had all of the bales on pallets so no damage from ground moisture but we had mold from some of the cheaper blue tarps that we bought. The more expensive tarps did fine so we are going to bite the bullet and get some more of the expensive tarps and build a canopy.




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[farmerjan]

We put our big round bales up on old tires because of using the "bale bed" truck to pick them up. Many use pallets but they could get broken up and then there's a flat tire on the truck etc.. We stack them in a pyramid shape; 3-2-1 on top. The tarp goes over and DO NOT have the tarp go all the way to the ground so it "seals in the moisture". Ours come down to about 2-3 feet off the ground. We have the big tarps designed for "tarping round bales of hay". If the hay is up off the ground, it might get a little wet or some spoilage, but it can breathe.
To preserve the shape of the bales, so they don't "squish flat", you can set them on "edge" so the flat side is down. Most that store them in barns do it that way. You can put one flat side, them put one with the round side on top... like a "mushroom cap" to get the rounded top for the tarp and it won't collect water like if it was a flat top. If you have a "grab" to get them it is safer. Looks like a pair of arms. The arms on the "bale bed" of the truck works good. My son can grab them, move up a bit, set them down so they flip over to the round side down, then grab them from the other direction, and be able to unroll them or whatever. You want to round side "up" when they are outside so it sheds the rain. The thing is to make sure the tarp goes over far enough that the water will run off. The tarps that are made for that, have "loops" like large handles, on the sides that you run a piece of pipe in from one end to another or a couple of them that are 8 or more feet long, then attach something like cement blocks to the pipe and it holds it down. We tie the heavy plastic stings that come off the big square bales, to old tires, and have them hang down on the tarps on both sides; or tie tires to the pipes as weights.

 

[Bruce]

and get the large bales for $30.00 a bale

Nice price! That is what I paid for my 3 small rounds.

I would think it imperative to have some air space between the hay and the tarp all around.

 

[Mike CHS]

We talked about it and decided to bite the bullet and build a good sized carport type of shelter for hay storage.